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In the English language, many animals have different names depending on whether they are male, female, young, domesticated, or in groups. The best-known source of many English words used for collective groupings of animals is The Book of Saint Albans , an essay on hunting published in 1486 and attributed to Juliana Berners . [ 1 ]
For example, the collective noun "group" can be applied to people ("a group of people"), or dogs ("a group of dogs"), or objects ("a group of stones"). Some collective nouns are specific to one kind of thing, especially terms of venery, which identify groups of specific animals. For example, "pride" as a term of venery always refers to lions ...
Common endings for masculine and neuter nouns are -ii or -i in the singular and -orum in the plural, and for feminine nouns -ae in the singular and -arum in the plural. The noun may be part of a person's name, often the surname, as in the Tibetan antelope ( Pantholops hodgsonii ), the shrub Magnolia hodgsonii , or the olive-backed pipit ...
The word cow came via Anglo-Saxon cū (plural cȳ), from Common Indo-European gʷōus (genitive gʷowés) 'a bovine animal', cf. Persian: gâv, Sanskrit: go-, Welsh: buwch. [18] The plural cȳ became ki or kie in Middle English, and an additional plural ending was often added, giving kine, kien, but also kies, kuin and others.
Used for large groups of animals that share similar characteristics; also used in names of bird and fish orders. Examples: Galliformes ("chicken form"); Anseriformes ("goose form"); Squaliformes ("shark form")
The plural may be used to emphasise the plurality of the attribute, especially in British English but very rarely in American English: a careers advisor, a languages expert. The plural is also more common with irregular plurals for various attributions: women killers are women who kill, whereas woman killers are those who kill women.
Articles whose titles are the common (vernacular) names of animals are titled in sentence case—for example, Przewalski's horse, Black bear. Where a vernacular name contains a proper name, that is also capitalised—for example, Small Indian civet. Common names are never italicised.
Boy herding a flock of sheep, India; a classic example of the domestic herding of animals Wildebeest at the Ngorongoro Crater; an example of a herd in the wild. A herd is a social group of certain animals of the same species, either wild or domestic. The form of collective animal behavior associated with this is called herding. These animals ...